Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The shorter of our two rainy seasons decided to rear its head in full force the other day. As a consequence, we poor researchers in Talek have been confined to camp for the past 5 days for fear of getting stuck in seemingly endless pools of mud. Among the best things about this time of year however are all the miniature carbon copies of our favorite animal species which have started to pop up all around the Mara. In anticipation of the greater abundance of food and resources the rains are to bring, many animals choose this time of year to have their offspring. While it's certainly an interesting phenomenon from a biological standpoint, for us dear Fisi campers it also means lot and lots of baby pictures! So without further ado, I'd like to show you some of the best ones we've seen. Enjoy!

We started seeing elephant moms with their babies around June/July

African crowned cranes and their chicks

Rare sighting of a young water buck in Serena!
PC Mike Kowalski

PC Lily J-U

Wildebeest calves are born primarily during the long rainy season, and will migrate with
their mothers and the rest of the herd north to the Mara River as the dry season begins.
PC Mike Kowalski

Zebra are born with a light brown overcoat to their black stripes.
In general, the browner a zebra is, the younger it is!
PC Mike Kowalski

And of course, what would a baby pictures post be without some shots of our dear Talek (and Serena!) hyenas? Spotted hyenas aren't limited to a certain time of year when it comes to giving birth, so there are new additions to our clans all the time! Here are some of the most recent.

Adonis, head of our KCM group, had two cubs in early July. Welcome Risk and Clue!

Here is Buenos Aires (head of Main Doc, our largest hyena group) with her cub Hertz

And here are some of the cubs on the Serena side! This photo was taken
at South clan's den, where currently about a dozen young cubs reside.

BONUS: These photos were taken when we visited the Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi. These guys might not belong to the Mara specifically, but it was still really cool to see how the Kenyan Wildlife Service cares for them before re-releasing them into the wild!

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